Shame the Devil
by angelwhisperer
Summary: Drugs. Riots. Homicide. The Titans have never faced a man like this before, and Robin isn't sure they can handle it. But he has secrets of his own, from a past he refuses to share, and those festering wounds are about to be the death of him.
1. Chapter 1

So my muse has been spontaneously resurrected from the dead. I've always loved Teen Titans, so I figured I would try my hand at it. Yes, I have other stories I need to be working on, but they have hit a two-year blockade. I'll get to them eventually.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans. And the intro quote isn't mine either.

* * *

"_The darkness that surrounds us cannot hurt us. It is the darkness in your own heart you should fear."_

A scream startles the dawn. Blue eyes snap open, clouded with panic that is quickly replaced by grief. The harsh sound cuts off with a strangled sob as he rolls over, bowed with arms braced at his sides and head pressed against the mattress. The room is quiet again, save for ragged breathing and the pounding pulse in his ears. He stays that way for a long while, curled over on the rumpled bed in the dark like a beaten man. The adrenaline and panic leave, but the anguish doesn't.

When his breathing has slowed, he collapses on his side and wraps strong arms around his head, and the dawn is silent again.

Pain claws at him like a monster, ruthless and angry, tearing a hole where his heart should be. He lay curled on the bed with knees to his chest, and digs his fingers in his skull, willing it all away. The memories, the images, the pain, go away _go away—_

A knock at the door makes him jump. "Robin?"

Raven's quiet voice surprises him. He can't face her, not now, with his pain so raw in the black of dawn. She would see it, all of it, and he can't let her know how _broken he is_.

Silence, and he hopes that if he ignores her, she will leave him to his misery.

"Robin, are you alright?"

But he should have known better, because she's an empath. His pain, so sharp and burning in his soul, is as real to her as it is to him. Real enough to wake her up, to draw her to his room, to worry because he knows she cares dearly for her team, as much as she will deny it.

She can't see him like this, though. None of them can. His pain, his burden, he can't let them know how weak their leader is. They will leave him, abandon him like _everyone else._

He moves his arms from his face and calls quietly, "Fine." It comes out hoarse and he bites back a curse.

He knows that she's just beyond the door now, debating on how far to pry and if she should leave well enough alone, because she of all people understands the value of privacy. But it almost destroyed her once, and she will recall that now.

She's quiet, and he hopes she will lose interest and leave. "Robin, you—"

"I'm fine, Raven," he cuts her off, more harsh than he intended. She's not Starfire, though, who loves to be loved and is so easily upset in the face of anger. Raven will pursue if she feels it's needed, and withdraw if she decides she doesn't really care. He knows her, her weaknesses and her strengths, how she ticks and what can bring her to her knees.

He knows all of them, really, and that knowledge scares them.

"No you're not," he hears her murmur, so quiet it hardly penetrates the door. The following silence is oppressive like the dark before dawn, and he wants to scream.

"You know better, Raven," he finally replies, when it's clear she won't leave and won't speak. "You know better than to pry."

"It's not prying. You came to me."

He can't argue with that, has nothing to say in return, because his nightmares woke her in the heart of the night and they both know it.

"Just leave it," he hears himself say and it sounds like begging. "Leave it be, Rachel."

She's shocked into silence for a long time, and if he were any less than Batman's protégé, he would think she had left. He can still feel her presence, though, right outside the door. Her feet haven't touched the floor and her breathing is soft, like a wind swaying velvet drapes.

His desperate defense isn't helping, advertising that he knows more than she does about her and him and the team and everything. He can't have this conversation right now, though, not tonight when the screams are still ringing in his ears and he can smell the blood on his hands, on his clothes, that's not washing out, _not ever…_

"Robin?"

Her anxious inquire drags him out of his downward spiral long enough to realize that he's doing it again. She's close enough to feel his torment broadcasted through the air like radio waves and he needs her to go away now before she sees too much.

"Go to bed," he whispers and he knows she hears. "I'm f…fine."

He almost can't spit the lie out, because he's not, he's so not, and it turns to ash in his mouth. She's not an idiot, and she doesn't believe it for a second, but she's not cruel either. _(She thinks so. She says so, and Robin hates Trigon for that. Not for earths destruction or mankind's fall, but because she will carry that darkness to her grave, and nothing he does can cleanse her of it). _

So she backs off instead. He can feel her withdrawing from the door, decided on returning to bed and leaving him to suffer because he asked her to, and she can't help if he won't let her.

"You let me in once," she finally says. "And I'm not going anywhere."

She's gone after that, slips like a wraith down the hallway and across the tower to her room, where she will sit on her bed and not sleep and wonder why his psi-null nightmares can wake a half-demon telepath from her slumber in a cold sweat.

* * *

Four hours later, he has gathered enough control to wrestle his demons back into their cages, stored in the darkest recesses of his mind where he can ignore them and pray that the feeble walls he has erected will be enough to hold them at bay. Even so, he curses the morning sun as it streams through his seaside window and chases the darkness away.

He wonders as he drags himself out of bed if Raven will tell the others about their encounter at dawn. She's not an open person by any stretch of the imagination, and tends to keep to herself to the point of isolation. Then again, they are not the same people they were before Trigon's hostile takeover. They had to change, adapt to the world or be consumed by it. He can't imagine her exposing secrets that are not her own, but his team mates have an irritating knack for surprising him.

He's seated at the edge of the bed, hunched over with the earth upon his shoulders, when a knock at the door jerks him from his dark musing. He doesn't need to answer, because his team knows him well enough to know that he is always listening, even when they aren't speaking.

"Robin?" It's Beast Boy. There's anxiety in his voice, and Robin can picture him outside the room, rocking back on his heels and rubbing a nervous hand through green hair. "It's the commissioner, dude. Something's up."

Robin sighs and massages his aching eyes. "I'm coming."

When Beast Boy is gone, Robin scrounges up the energy to rise, wash his face with a cold shock and pull on his uniform. There's no time for nightmares and mourning, because Robin will always be more important than Richard, and his city needs him now. Later, he will make way for aching grief, when twilight darkness sucks the light away and there is no one to bear witness to his weakness.

He stops at the door, leans his head against the cool metal, draws strength from the calm and quiet before the storm.

When he emerges from the hallway, the team has already gathered in the main room. Sunrise has long since driven the vestiges of night away and yellow light is streaming through the seaviewing windows. There's a city map displayed on the screen and the commissioner is on the line, already speaking to Cyborg. Raven is at his left shoulder, and Robin has the irrational urge to turn around and go back to bed.

"Commissioner," Robin calls, alerting the room to his presence. He passes Starfire and Beast Boy, who are standing near the sofa, and takes a place by Cyborg. "This is unusual. Did something happen?"

Commissioner Mark Taylor is a tall African man with a broad jaw and perpetually furrowed eyebrows. "You could say that," he says, voice akin to two boulders grinding together. "We don't usually come to you with cases like this, but frankly, we're in over our heads."

"Piece of cake," Beast Boy answers, appearing between Raven and Cyborg with a grin and throwing an arm across his shoulders. "We've totally got it."

"We'll see," Taylor grumbles, and Cyborg shoves the shifter off with a grunt. "72 hours ago we received a call from the Seventh Street Apartments' landlord, reported hearing screaming from the second floor. We responded to what we assumed was a domestic disturbance. Upon arrival, we found the body of Ron Davis in an abandoned apartment on second floor."

"We s'posed to know this guy?" Cyborg asks, hands resting on the console.

Robin, whose exhaustion has been shoved aside when faced with a case, is already typing at the mainframe. The image of a middle-aged white man overlaps the city map. "He's Jump City's Utilities Director," he answers in Taylor's stead.

Raven arches an eyebrow and her pale face is anything but impressed. "The police can't handle homicide calls now?" she deadpans.

"I wasn't done," the Commissioner continues, sounding irritated. "You know Seventh Street is a crime ally. Ron Davis is a wealthy man with a wife and kids. He lives on the complete opposite side of town."

Robin narrows his eyes, arms crossed. "Then what was he doing there?"

"Isn't that the million dollar question."

"Why are you recruiting our help for this?" Robin asks, because there is so much more below the surface. Commissioner Taylor never asks for help; if he's coming to them, that means this is bigger than his whole department and Robin isn't about to write this off as insignificant. The whole case smells something foul.

Taylor sighs, shows stress for the first time since contacting them. "Forensics teams have been hard at work, but we got nothing as far as identification goes. No fingerprints, no DNA, no blood, weapons, nothing for us to go on. For a guy who left a bloody mess, he sure knew how to clean up behind himself."

Cyborg shakes his head, frustrated and disbelieving, and his red eye gleams in the morning sunlight. "There's gotta be something, man. Stuff like that don't just happen and nobody notice."

"We viewed the security camera footage to see if we could get an image of the UNSUB," Taylor continues in answer. "We didn't get the actual encounter or the murder on tape, but we did get something."

Robin has already hacked into the police database as the Commisioner is speaking, and the video clip appears on screen. It's a dark and gritty image of the abandoned nighttime parking lot and sidewalk leading up to the apartment front. A moment passes and headlights appear on screen, followed by a vehicle parking. When the lights switch off, the video is bathed in green-tinged darkness. A figure appears walking up the sidewalk, bundled in a black coat and frequently looking over his shoulder as though he expected to be followed.

Cyborg leans forward for a closer look. "Is that Davis?"

"Yes," Taylor answers. "He arrived before our suspect in a car that didn't belong to him."

"Whose car was it then?

"We ran the licence number. Came back registered to Grace Warren, Utilities Department secretary."

The Director walks under the camera and disappears. A minute and a half pass in darkness and silence. Beast Boy sighs, throws himself on the sofa, and opens his mouth to complain when a silhouette appears out of the shadows from the side. Robin leans forward, eyes searching the image for details.

"It is difficult to see," Starfire states from beside the Titans' leader. "How are we to identify him?"

The figure approaches and, though dark, it's clear that his form is lanky and his stride is casual. Closer now, and his clothes are baggy on his angular form. He's twirling something long and thin in his hand like a baton.

He's just about to pass under the camera when he stops, body rigid and head cocked to the side. Slowly, he takes a step back so that he is in full view and looks up, straight at the camera.

Starfire yelps and jumps back, startled and more than a little afraid of this man accused of murder. Beast Boy leaps nearly a foot in the air, morphing into a green mouse before scampering up Cyborgs arm and leaping into Raven's hood. She doesn't appear to notice, and Cyborg leans forward with a frown. "The hell…"

The UNSUB is tall and thin, dressed as though it's All Hallows Eve and not the middle of July. There's a grin pulling at the stitches in the burlap sacking of his face, loose and tattered and gruesome. He has a rope noose swaying around his neck, worn hat on his head, and a long, silver scythe resting on his shoulder.

He stands still for a moment, a grim reaper on the edge of night, and stares full into the camera lens. Robin's hand tightens on the edge of the console as he bites back a nasty curse. The man moves suddenly. The scythe is swinging, glinting in the pre-dawn moon, before it collides with the camera and the screen goes dark.

There's silence for a long moment as the team absorbs what they have just seen. Commissioner Taylor speaks again, and he's addressing Robin directly this time. "The victim was slashed to death. Forensics have matched the wounds to the scythe blade. We've all but confirmed him as the killer, whoever he is." Taylor pauses and Robin runs the video back, freezing it on the haunting image of their criminal. "I know you have history with these freak shows," Taylor continues. "Do you have any idea who this guy is?"

Robin is silent and the team turns to face him. He has years on them, has seen horrors they will never bear witness to, and they don't need his backstory to know that.

"Yes," he answers, like lead to the bottom of the sea. "And if he's involved, things just got a lot more complicated."

"What do you know about him?"

"I'll upload the file to you," Robin answers. He pauses, mind racing a mile a minute, and there's so much the police don't know. "Do me a favor, Commissioner."

"What?"

"Stay away from this guy. Let me and my team handle him. This guy…you and your men haven't dealt with anything like him before."

"What am I supposed to tell the public? That the police have given up? They'll want answers."

"Tell them we're on the case. Tell them the Titans will bring him down."

Taylor is quiet for a long moment, rolling it over in his head. "Keep me updated on your progress," he finally says, and it comes out like a grumble. "Let me know if you need any backup."

"Will do, Commissioner."

"And Titans."

Beast Boy is human again, an arm resting on Starfire's shoulder. "Yeah?"

"Ron Davis was a well loved member of the community. You be sure to take this freakshow out."

"You got it, dude."

* * *

"Robin."

His lab is dark and the laptop screen casts a blue glow on the poster-covered walls. He withdrew shortly after the conversation with Commissioner Taylor, not content on exposing his team to the gruesome truth until he had taken care of this first.

This is the last person he wants to talk to, but he knows they can't avoid each other forever. They have a common enemy now.

"Batman."

"This is a surprise," the black-clad man states, as stoic as he was the last time they spoke. "What do you need?"

"I don't need anything from you," Robin snaps before he can stop himself, but he doesn't regret it. That anger, bitter and painful, is festering just below the surface again, and it takes all of his self-control to reign it in.

Batman pauses for only a moment, with a facial twitch that Robin would have missed had he not lived with the man for ten years. "Then why did you call?"

"Your trash is in my city."

* * *

So there you have it. Chapter 1 is more like an intro, prequel well, plot establishing thingy. It will be _much _more interesting after this.

Please review. They light up my introverted, college life. And I wanna see who can guess my bad guy.


	2. Chapter 2

It's alive...IT'S ALIVE!

Yeah. I'm still here. Here is chapter 2 of my Frankenstein monster. I know it's a little slow now, but it will pick up very soon.

Standard disclaimer. Warnings for cursing and spoilers.

* * *

_"Fearless, fight until we die. __I am broken, the wretched and divine."_

"I want to do this with as little damage as possible. Don't move on him until I give the signal."

"Dude, Rob, chill out. It's just Rancid," Beast Boy answers over the com, sitting shotgun and feet propped in the T car. Morning has become late afternoon and the sun is a glaring yellow eye braced in stark blue. Charcoal clouds on the horizon promise rain, but for now, the day is hot and the sky is clear save the girls in flight above the street.

Robin is just ahead of the car, his cycle a red streak across the city, and the scowl on his face hasn't faded since early dawn. "Don't drop your guard," he answers in a snap that tears through the open channel of the communicators.

There's a startled silence from the rest of the team and wind is a shrieking melody in their ears. "What is this about, man?" Cyborg breaks the tension, frowning, because he knows his leader and Robin hasn't acted like this since a mask and a handful of dust nearly destroyed him. "You know something that we don't."

They make a sharp left off of 12th street onto Telfair and the highways are crowded at noon but Jump City knows when to get out of the Titans' way. A path is made down the middle, as it would for an ambulance, and they continue unhindered. "Think about it," Robin finally says. "Rancid has taken hostages and killed four people in cold blood. It doesn't match his MO."

Starfire speaks up for the first time, emeralds eyeing the skyline and seeing madness. "Please, what is this MO?"

"Method of Operation."

"It means the way a criminal does something," Raven clarifies when it becomes clear that Robin will not expand.

"So his MO changed," Beast Boy continues. "Big deal."

Robin is already refuting. "MOs don't evolve that drastically overnight. Rancid is many things, but a murderer isn't one of them." Jefferson Street is in sight, the flashing reds and blues clear even from their distance. Sirens are a blazing symphony, frantic and furious, bleeding between clefs and notes and ledger lines. Civilians have cleared the area, but they can hear it; the damage is done.

Cyborg tries to follow the leader's train of thought. "You think he didn't do it?"

"I know he did. There are eyewitnesses that confirm it, and that's what worries me," Robin continues as they pull up on scene. "We're missing something."

The hotel is under lockdown. The scene is loud, panicked, crowded. Police and SWAT have the building surrounded, with snipers on roofs and guns aimed at every feasible exit. It's a situation of minimal loss, a grisly nightmare where they can't save everyone and the truth is as hard to swallow as the lies. Rancid has an undefined MO and the whole city is teetering on the edge of terror. A pin drop, and the world will explode beneath their feet.

Jump City has never faced anything like this before, but Robin is a pillar of calm in the storm.

The girls land as Robin approaches the Commissioner. "Taylor," he greets stiffly, arms crossed and masked eyes studying the hotel doors.

"Plan on keeping the police in the dark about this one, too?" Taylor grumbles, the conversation from earlier not yet forgotten. But there's a gun in his hand and twelve hostages just behind those doors, so he lets the matter drop.

Robin ignores the jibe. "How long?"

"Forty six long-ass minutes."

"We're sure it's Rancid?"

"Yes."

The team comes up behind him, eyes hard and set like obsidian. "What's the plan?" Cyborg asks from his left shoulder.

Robin is quiet for a long moment, mind racing a mile a minute, mulling over strategies and counter measures and possible outcomes and how many he can logically save. Taylor's silence tells him enough about the police: they have no way of getting in without losing the civilians to Rancid's spontaneous insanity. The next few minutes are on him, and all of the blood that would come with it.

"This is going to be stealth," he finally says, and the team focuses on their leader. "It has to be. We can't gauge Rancid's mental state, so we have to assume that he will open fire the moment he sees us. We have one shot at this. Fail, and the hostages get caught in the crossfire."

They nod together, and the last time he saw them this serious, they were marching off to die at the hands of Trigon.

"Beast Boy, I need to know the situation," he continues, eyes turned on his green friend. "Positions, obstacles, weapons. We need to know what he's doing. Don't let him see you. You have two minutes to get in and get out."

Beast Boy nods, with his wit surprisingly absent, and transforms into a green fly before darting toward the hotel and disappearing. The team watches with a sharp gaze and tense shoulders.

"Are you sure about this?" Raven asks softly from his left shoulder. He doesn't turn to her, but can see from his peripheral vision that her hood is up and her eyes are dark. They haven't spoken about his nightmare yet, and the tension between them is palpable.

"About which part?"

"Sending Beast Boy in alone," she continues, crossing her arms. "Stealth isn't exactly his forte."

"He'll be fine. We need to have faith in his ability." Robin is watching the windows, as if bidding the situation to resolve itself by force of will. The tight grip of his fingers betrays his calm. "If we don't give him responsibilities, he will never grow."

"There are kids in there, Robin," she hisses, turning to face him for the first time, pale face tight with something more than anger.

"You of all people have no place to judge his ability to protect," he snaps, stress from a sleepless night and his conversation with Batman finally breaking through the façade of calm.

Raven flinches back, images of Kardiak and spell books and screaming children flashing through her mind. She turns back to the hotel, silent.

He's guilty as soon as he says it, feels more like Bruce than he cares to admit, but the situation is too severe to make amends now. He wonders when his blue eyes darkened, casting the world in shadow and grief, wonders when he had lost his faith in people like the caged bird that no longer sings, and thinks that he has no right to call himself Robin. Fleetingly, he recalls something Starfire had said in a depressing tale of time travel and loneliness, when faithlessness had strung his team out, scattered them like stars in the night, and Robin had been banished to the deepest corner of his mind where it lay forgotten in a shadow of blue. Robin is hope, but his has abandoned him like the sun at twilight.

Minutes pass in tension and silence and a controlled chaos that reminds him too much of Gotham. Taylor is issuing orders to the snipers on the roof, urging them to keep their eyes peeled, don't pull the trigger because we have people in there now, and the Titans are still as they wait in breathless silence for Beast Boy to return to them. The hotel itself is a fortress of silence even as lives within are dangling on that precarious edge of oblivion. The clock is playing on, the maestro to a fierce melody, and it will reach its climax soon in a great show of murder and blood.

Beast Boy appears before Raven can warn them, landing in a graceful crouch, and Starfire nearly jumps out of her skin. Robin doesn't flinch. "What did you find?"

"Twelve hostages. They're all against the far wall, in the back of the building," Beast Boy begins, standing up and running a hand through unruly hair. "He has them chained together, bombs strapped to their chests."

Cyborg spits a curse like acid, hands locked behind his head. "We're gonna need the Bomb Squad."

"Where is Rancid?" Robin demands, fingers clenched tight like the fear that now threatens to break the city apart in an iron grasp.

"In front of them, facing the door," Beast Boy answers, looking back toward the building. "There's only one way in that room, dude. He's got the whole place locked down tight. Trip wires all over the place."

Robin is quiet, hard eyes trained on the hotel, and Raven speaks up. "Did he see you?"

Beast Boy shakes his head, rubs a hand through green hair. "He seemed…weird."

"Weirder than usual?" Cyborg snorts, half-distracted as he scans the building for additional signs of life.

"No, dude, I mean like…off. He was high or something because I don't think he has _any_ idea where he is. Screaming and stuff. Kept calling some old dude 'dad'."

"Drugs."

Starfire steps beside Robin, whose shoulders are tense and ready to snap, and studies him with emerald eyes. "Perhaps these drugs are responsible for his altered Method of Operations."

"Maybe," Robin murmurs after a long moment. Starfire doesn't look away, because he knows more than they do and he doesn't trust them enough to say what. They have been through this once before, when a friend became an enemy in a desperate bid for information and the fallout almost destroyed them. She can't let that happen again, and when she glances over at Raven, the pale girl meets her gaze with the same resolve.

Secrets are the enemy. They are the silent killer.

Tension is a pounding heartbeat in the air. Cyborg looks up from his scanner. "What's the plan, Rob?" he calls, mismatched eyes trained on their leader. "We gotta make our move before Rancid really loses it and starts pulling triggers."

Robin turns from the building to face them as a bitter wind rips across the city like music and madness. There's an icy shiver crawling up his spine and he knows it, has a history of intimacy with it; it has a name and a million faces. It is the adversary that seizes them with a fist and fire, that turns the world to ash. This is the Garden again and there is enmity between the two, but mankind has a secret attraction for that which will destroy them in the end.

_Coward_, his mind hisses (with a face, green hair, a bloody grin) and he thinks of dust and darkness.

"Raven and I will go in from behind," he states, drawing himself from his downward spiral and turning to face them. He sees in their steadfast eyes that they know he has a secret, that all isn't well and he hasn't fooled them, but there's no time and the whole city will go up in smoke if they don't move now. "We'll go in covertly, remove the hostages from risk. That's our first priority. I need to get my hands on the bombs and determine if I can deactivate them myself. Star, Beast Boy, I want both of you to come in overhead, through the vents. If Rancid spots us, you distract him long enough to get the hostages away." They nod, looking nervous but resolved. "Cyborg, I want you out here. You're damage control. If this goes to hell, you save as many as you can."

The larger man sighs, rubbing a hand over his head anxiously as a single red eye locks on Robin. "I don't like this, man. Way too many variables. This shit gonna hit the fan so fast—"

"We don't have a choice, Cyborg," the leader snaps, brow furrowed and jaw locked. "There is no good way to do this, no best case scenario, no possible situation where everyone gets out alive." They're silent now. Their eyes are wide, peering through a looking glass, seeing fear and regret and _familiarity_. He needs them to understand that it's a self-imposed delusion, that they _can't save everyone_ and the longer they believe it, the more it will hurt when they fail.

"This is the way it has to be. There is no reasoning with Rancid. We can only remove as many hostages as possible before his trigger finger blows to hell this side of Jump."

And his eyes, blue beneath black and white, are mirrors of a graveyard, have seen too much and not enough and innocents will die before his job is done, because this is the path he chose in order to save others from his own fate.

"The moment Rancid goes for that trigger, you pull out."

"But Robin," Starfire gasps, and he knows she will struggle with this because love and compassion are her life blood. "The hostages—"

"No, Star," he snaps and she flinches back. He doesn't want to hurt her, implores her silently to understand, and his spine is a rubber band read to snap. "You can't save anyone if you're dead."

They hate this helplessness, because it's not in their nature to run and that terrifies him. It's uncanny how alike they all are and he doesn't want this lifestyle to consume them, to eat them alive from the inside out like it has him since he was a boy. He can't be saved though; the monster has its claws in his soul and it won't let go until he's dead. He's afraid for his team, that the monster will devour them like the fear and the madness. He will protect them with every breath of his body because they will always be his priority and _to hell with the whole world_.

They're quiet, faces grave, eyes hard like headstones. They're ready to fight, to suffer, to fail because it's all they can do. They're human, like him, _so fucking human it hurts_.

"Cyborg," he continues, with their weight on his shoulders and the cool wind on his neck. "Update the Commissioner. We're moving now. Channel 7, maintain radio silence."

"You got it."

* * *

Please review. More chapters to come soon.


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